Phonics

When we teach children to read we have to teach them how books and words work. In the page on reading you can pick up some ideas for how you can help at home but this page deals with the most useful of skill we can teach them, phonics.

Children need to be able to read all the letters in the alphabet and to know the range of sounds they can make and what these sounds look like when written. All this is called 'phonics'. Expect your children to come home talking about digraphs, split vowel digraphs and phonemes! We run evenings in the autumn term to help you to understand how we teach this to the children and how it helps them develop their reading skills and their spelling. You will see how important phonics is in developing children's English skills and how it will set them up as lifelong readers and so, life long learners.

We aim to make sure that all children have grasped phonics skills by the end of year two and so they are tested in summer term year one to make sure they are at expected standards. If they do not reach this expectation they are tested against it again in year two and year three.